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Innovative technology overcomes human limits

Innovative technology has overcome the limits of our muscles and now it is overcoming the limits of our minds. In this TV show Andrew McAfee graphs the revolutions through human history.

Innovative technology is a "huge deal for humanity"

Well if you take a geek approach to human history you start to graph it, because geeks love numbers, they love quantifying things.
So a geeky approach to human history would be one where you start graphing over a time things like how many people there are, total population, or some metric about how advanced our civilisations are. Now it turns out people have come up with those, so you can graph those numbers as well.
Those two curves look exactly the same, either the population curve or the social development curve, what’s really weird about them is that they are totally flat throughout almost all of human history and then at one point in time they bend almost 90 degrees and they go from basically horizontal to basically vertical and that point in time was the industrial revolution.
So in other words all the other revolutions that we’ve had, revolutions and philosophy in religion and how we approach the world, the opening up of the world via trade, lots of things have happened over the course of history.
If you take this kind of geeky approach to graphing the course of humanity you come to the conclusion none of those things have mattered very much and what did matter was overcoming the limitations of our muscles, of muscle power, via the industrial revolution.
What we’re doing now with the computer revolution is overcoming the limitations of our individual minds or our brains, to at least the same extent as we overcame the limitations of our muscles with the industrial revolution.
So the simple question is, how could this not be a huge, huge deal for humanity?
Connected Economy TV has further expert discussion about innovative technology - Look out for more from Andrew McAfee

Innovative technology overcomes human limits

Innovative technology has overcome the limits of our muscles and now it is overcoming the limits of our minds. In this TV show Andrew McAfee graphs the revolutions through human history.

Innovative technology is a "huge deal for humanity"

Well if you take a geek approach to human history you start to graph it, because geeks love numbers, they love quantifying things.
So a geeky approach to human history would be one where you start graphing over a time things like how many people there are, total population, or some metric about how advanced our civilisations are. Now it turns out people have come up with those, so you can graph those numbers as well.
Those two curves look exactly the same, either the population curve or the social development curve, what’s really weird about them is that they are totally flat throughout almost all of human history and then at one point in time they bend almost 90 degrees and they go from basically horizontal to basically vertical and that point in time was the industrial revolution.
So in other words all the other revolutions that we’ve had, revolutions and philosophy in religion and how we approach the world, the opening up of the world via trade, lots of things have happened over the course of history.
If you take this kind of geeky approach to graphing the course of humanity you come to the conclusion none of those things have mattered very much and what did matter was overcoming the limitations of our muscles, of muscle power, via the industrial revolution.
What we’re doing now with the computer revolution is overcoming the limitations of our individual minds or our brains, to at least the same extent as we overcame the limitations of our muscles with the industrial revolution.
So the simple question is, how could this not be a huge, huge deal for humanity?
Connected Economy TV has further expert discussion about innovative technology - Look out for more from Andrew McAfee

Data strategy for unstructured data is the next challenge

Data strategy is increasingly important for organising the vast amounts of data that companies have, as Gayle Sheppard explains in this TV show.

Data Strategy for decision making

Well, companies have a long way to go in capturing unstructured textual data. Companies have done a pretty good job of capturing structured, transactional data. Relational databases, data warehouses, have evolved to help them organize data so it can be analyzed in traditional ways. I think the big challenge for companies in the future is really -- maybe there are three elements to it, actually.
One is that there are so many mergers and acquisitions that have transpired across the Fortune or Global 1,000 that there are many databases or data warehouses that contain information. And they are treasure troves of information. But integrating them or bringing them together in any way that makes sense is very challenging for corporations. It's very expensive to do it. It takes a lot of time. And these databases are filled with disparate ways of describing things. So the challenge is quite great. How do we bring all of this data together?
So, that's the first challenge. The second challenge I see in corporate America is how do we take advantage of all the text that we have? Customers write us. They send us messages on the web. We capture notes about our customers, our partners, our suppliers, employees. We have emails rich with information coming in from outside as well as inside the company about what's happening, whether it's customer-related or employer-related.
And so how do you take all of that information and make it part of the knowledge base? Not just transactions. Who bought from us, who do we sell to. Who was the supplier that we used in this particular situation. But the comments that actually capture experiences that we're having in real time with our partners, suppliers, and customers is truly an important part of the knowledge of a corporation. And companies haven't figured out how to use that yet. That's one of the things that Saffron helps them with, but that's challenge number two. All that textual information inside our company.
And then challenge number three is, how do we then go out to the web, how do we go to the resources we have available to us, whether it's open source news or blogs or other social networks, and capture the essence of that experience into our corporate knowledge base, so we can also use that information as part of our decision making process.
Connected Economy TV is very interested in new data strategy for the digital world, explore our channel for more discussion.

Digital engagement analytics have been of growing interest to businesses as they want to know exactly what impact their social media marketing campaigns are having.

Digital engagement analytics in marketing

Over the last ten years, people have really taken a lot of looking at analytics for their website. People want to know how many page view you're getting, how many unique visitors, how many click-throughs did you get, what was the percentage click-through on a banner ad. Some of those elements we're finding are less useful than the end result about ROI. You know, what was the revenue that you generated from your website? What was that brand perception that was improved by seeing your content on another site through public relations or partners and customers talking about you?
The new elements in social media people are still coming to grasp in terms of what's a successful campaign. What is the good result? How many followers do I need to consider this a success? How many click-throughs do I need to have success? Those same analytics that you've been running on your website can be run on social media. I can know how many clicks every single Tweet received. I can know how many followers I received over a given time period. I can know how many re-Tweets or how many forwards that I received from a specific campaign. I can know how many new people commented and interacted with me on my Facebook fan page. So each of these elements are converging, so you can find out just how many people you directly influenced through a campaign, how much reach that received, and whether that was a good use of your money and your time.
In any corporation, a marketing team needs to prove that it has value. Every single campaign needs to show that it had success, or every single message needs to be continually tweaked to make sure it's hitting the right people at the right time and saying the right things. If you are measuring your success in social media, you can help validate the activity that you're doing. You can help show direct results in terms of engagement with people, in terms of creating new customers, and in terms of helping your brand, both in popularity and in relevance.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow ideas around digital engagement and analytics.

Innovative technology works like human memory

Innovative technology from Saffron Technology aims to make business intelligence more natural by capturing people, places and things in a memory base. Gayle Sheppard explains in this TV show.

Innovative technology for a knowledge base

Saffron was conceived with the idea of making business intelligence natural and providing natural intelligence for everyone. That's the core of our foundation. And we did that by creating a technology that is essentially biologically inspired. We capture memories of people, places, and things. And in those memories, we don't store data, we actually store the connections of other people, places, and things that are connected to you, or that event, or that company, or that thing.
And with that, we also count the frequency so we can understand the strength of those connections. What that does is provide us a fundamental base of knowledge that can be used in sense making, decision support, and anticipation or prediction. And with that, no rules, no models. It's one of the great things about natural intelligence. And we naturally can ask questions of our memory, just like we do as humans. We store information in our brains, we recall it automatically, and we apply reasoning methods to it. That's exactly what Saffron does.
What we do is, through having a memory base, which is a base of knowledge about all the people, places, and things in data, and all the connections they have with other people, places, and things, we can explore hunches very easily. So if I were asking the question, gee, I think I've seen this before. Where have we done this before? I could ask that question of Saffron's memory base, and it would provide back to me, in more specific context of the thing, the event, the situation I'm discussing, where we've actually done it before. What the outcomes were. Were we successful. Were we not successful. Who was involved. Where did we do it. How long did it take. So that's an experience-based reaction to a question. Based on knowledge, implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge that we have about people, places, and things in the data.
If you found Gayle Sheppard's explanation of this innovative technology interesting, then please browse more shows on Connected Economy TV.

Digital world moves markets quicker

The digital world and mobile technology means that information is more easily available. This has caused the pace of business to increase as Arthur de Haast explains in this TV show.

Digital world and data interpretation

The digital world just makes things move a lot more quickly, it gives people access to a lot more information. You know, we’ve just launched our own app so that people can, you know, click on that. They can tap on it rather, not click these days, tap on the screen. And it tells them, you know, what opportunities or what investment opportunities there are available in that locality, can direct them to it, can give them basic information and so on. So that makes the market move more quickly, it’s a lot more transparent and actually information in its own right is no longer valuable because everybody has information. What is now much more important and what we concentrate on is how do you then interpret that information and use it to give good advice to people who want to invest and so on. So it means that you’re having to think much harder about the value add and how you’re going to, so on the one hand it’s very positive and it creates, you know, speed to market and that sort of thing. But at the same time it means that we’ve got to think a lot harder about how we can add value and look after our clients, given that what’s happening in that space.
If you found this video interesting and want to hear more about the Digital world and data interpretation, please browse more videos on Connected Economy TV.

Progressive technology from Apple

Well lets think about 5 or 6 years ago. Smart phones were good but they weren't incredible, which is what you're seeing now. Tablet was almost a foreign term. We had PDAs, we had Netbooks, so miniature laptops, but we didn't necessarily have this rectangle. This little slate that we can fling in our bags its effortless use, its effortless to carry around. That's what we've got now. We've progressed to a level, mainly bolstered by Apple and the iPad. Its completely carved out an entirely new category that's enabling us to get the most out of consumption on the move, be it retail, multimedia, general information or work based stuff. It's allowing us to, with a simple tap and a swipe, have access to online tools, emails and web-browsing. It's great for productivity. There's so much you can do now, and that's partly or mainly down to all of these new gadgets.
Progressive technology and digital connectivity have huge implications for business and Inside Finance TV will continue to follow the effects.

Data strategy for multimedia content

Search is a really important part of what Google does in travel.
So people typing something in and then getting a response that’s relevant.
But also you know, people are now going onto video a lot more, so YouTube and being able to look and see what a hotel’s like or what a holiday’s like is really key.
And then also we’re developing things like hotel finder and that amalgamates all the bits of data and information that a user would need in order to book a hotel for example.
So it’s got the pictures. It’s got the price point. It’s got reviews. And it’s got maps.
And it’s got all the things that help a user get to that point from, you know, thinking about maybe going somewhere and actually facilitating that actual transaction and booking through a third party.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow ideas around data strategy and there are more videos from Nigel Huddleston.

Information management strategy on the fly

Information management strategy has been revolutionized by "Big Data". In this TV show Andrew Sangster discusses turning expensive data into clever data.

Information management strategy is expensive

The problem with data or to get technical its relational database, is that it is so very fixed rigid. You have lines, addresses and the purchases made.
So you will have a relational database for what the guest has done in terms of their booking.
You will have one in terms of what they have done when they have gone to a food & beverage outlet.
You might have another one in terms of how guests have browsed your website.
So it’s all stored in lot of different places, what guests have booked in terms of amenities and you know whether there’s a spa, and it’s all stored in different places and it just doesn’t talk to each other, it’s just sat there, sitting there in this database in a very expensive way actually.
These relational databases are very expensive to maintain, they require lot of hardware in terms of the data itself there, the inputting, setting them up and constructing them.
Well actually, if you can break them all free and actually get all of those databases talking to each other.
I think the evolution now, well revolution actually with big data coming along actually breaking those data bases apart, linking them all together ad actually doing it faster, cheaper on the fly.
So what would take days if you had the time and money to it, the getting the databases to talk to each other by traditional routes you can do instantly on the fly now.
It is possible to produce very compelling offers now for customers using this data.
Connected Economy TV will continue to bring you expert insight and opinion on information management strategy and the uses and challenges of Big Data.

Digital engagement – Power and risk

Digital engagement using social technologies can be exceptionally powerful and can be a business risk. The platforms produce a lot of information and data. In this TV show Professor Ian Golding explains that instantaneous online platforms are difficult to digest.

Digital engagement impact

I think we are still grappling with what it means, social technologies again have immense power.
We have seen how they have been used in very very positives ways. In the Arab Spring for example. In many other places where they have become a political force.
Wiki closing it's website effectively for 24 hours on the political processes in the US was quite remarkable, it led to the reversal of legislation, very rapid new forms of political mobilization have resulted.
We have also seen how it has led to the collapse of reputations.
Photographs of the gulf oil fuels for example have led to very very serious loss of value for shareholders and this will continue.
I think the danger with it of course is that there's a lot of herding, a lot of trivia.
Discerning in this data deluge whats is significant, what matters, and what one shouldn't absorb is the biggest challenge.
So it's like drinking from a fire hydrant, very difficult to do effectively, and that power is only going to increase over time.
So working out what we absorb and how we absorb it, how we learn from it, I think is going to be absolutely critical.
If you are interested in discussion around social technologies, digital engagement and information management, bookmark Connected Economy TV and keep an eye out for more shows.

Digital economy lifestyle redefining hotel luxury

In this digital economy luxury is more about enabling a lifestyle that is easy, accessible and comfortable than lavish. In this TV show Michael Levie discusses the impact of the digital lifestyle on the hospitality industry.

Digital economy: value of technology

I think we are looking for luxury, but luxury in the past, was maybe a crystal chandelier and white gloves service.
Today it is more in a hybrid environment when you flip open your laptop and have an internet connection.
Historically we will be categorised by a gender or by the income or by origin or whatever. Today we travel in jeans, we have on a cheap T-shirt, we have a designer watch, we sip champagne and we take the bus home.
And we do that both for leisure and for business.
What we feel is, is that today people gravitate to lifestyle and you want to belong to a certain lifestyle.
So in a day and age of Apple iPhones and computers we take a strip of sushi, we would like to have fashion and architecture and beautiful objects around and that provides us an environment that we are comfortable in or that we aspire to.
That's what we try to provide at Citizen M.

Connected Economy TV will continue to explore ideas around the digital economy and there will be more TV shows from Michael Levie.

Digital generation of 1989 entering the world of work

Digital generation, digital natives and generation Y are all references to the young people who have grown up with technology. They are now reaching the age where they are entering industry. Graeme Codrington discusses the significance of this.

The digital generation born at the same time as the internet

Technology is obviously a huge driver of change in our world. Recent advances in computing power have really brought computers up to a level where they can now deliver on what our imaginations have been promising for a few decades, and it really just is in the last literally 18 - 24 months that computing power speed size and price have all come together to mean we can really do what we want to do with computers and now we are set up for the next decade of change, but in addition to the raw computing power, it's also the people, we have got a group of people we like to call digital natives who are entering the world of work, these are the young people that were born in that remarkable year of change 1989, the year communism died and the Berlin wall came and Tiananmen Square happened. But also 1989 was the year the internet as we know it was started. Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML and web pages where born, and young people who were born in 1989 were born in the same year that the internet was born and started working for you last year, and they've brought their computers with them, and so it's this combination of computing power and a new generation of digital natives arriving in the workplace at precisely the same time, its going to cause huge disruptive change.
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Connected Economy TV will continue to follow the impact of the digital generation entering the world of work.

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